Thursday, 25 February 2010

First, I’m very happy to say that we have indeed been given the green light for another extension – the collection will now ‘end’ at 180 issues.

Speaking to the head-honchos, it would appear that at the last extension we were nearly given the go-ahead to go to 180. Apparently a few logistical issues needed to be sorted before we could 100% confirm the series would go to 180 – hence the move to 160 first.

Of course this means the usual lists of wants are going to appear again as well as the debate here and on the forums. For this extension I (Eaglemoss) will once again be choosing the majority, however, I am happy to try and run a competition or two as well as give a couple of slots to a vote on the superherofigurineforum.

At the moment I have not finalized all our picks or decided how many figures to let you guys choose but I think a good balance would be Eaglemoss to choose 15 and the fans (one way or another) to choose 5.

More info will be coming shortly but to get the ball rolling I’m going to confirm one figure this week. That character is… the Beetle.

The character first appeared in Strange Tales #123 fighting the Human Torch. Although he’s not the most famous of Marvel Super Villains, the Beetle is a classic villain who has turned up fighting pretty much all Marvel’s stars. He’s tangled with the FF, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man and the Avengers. He’s also been a member of the Thunderbolts.

Personally, I think his costume looks great and he’ll make an awesome figurine. I like the original costume as well as the second one (both are below). The character nearly made it into the first 160 issues but was just pipped to the post by Balder.

On to specials news. As most of you know we’ve been looking at either Omega Red or Ronan the Accuser as the next regular sized special. I’ve been working hard with our sculptors to produce both these figurines, but a few issues with Omega Red have put him behind schedule, making Ronan more likely. Nothing is confirmed yet but I thought you’d appreciate the update. Below is the rough sculpt for Ronan, it’s a classic pose I’m sure most are familiar with but let me know what you think.

Hopefully we’ll have some Omega Red shots in soon and you guys can compare the two.

Friday, 12 February 2010

Welcome back after a slight break last week, my apologies for the lack of update.

First I just wanted to address some of the comments about the Wasp.

We chose the haircut shown from the beginning of the recent Mighty Avengers comics. We decided to go with this hairstyle for two reasons: First, we looked at the shorter ‘rough’ cut hairstyle that Jan had prior to our one and it wasn’t working very well in production. The hair would have made the figure look very tomboy and had a lot more potential to go horribly wrong in final production. Second, we thought the one we choose was unique and really separated Jan from all the other female characters.

As far as the wings go, we’re only looking into the possibility of adding clear polyresin wings (not cheap plastic) to see if we can make the wings thin and insect-like. The polyresin substance has the potential to look good and be a little stronger than thin lead. I’ve yet to get samples in but I’ll pop some pics comparing the two on here when we do.

On to this week’s sneak peek. I give you Pyro at an early stage in his development.

About Me

Dan Rachael (Art Editor, previous credits BBC Children's Magazines and Marvel UK) has recently inherited the blog from Richard Jackson who has moved on to bigger and better things (not in our opinion!). Dan has been tasked with navigating the starship Excelsior (CMFC)! to boldly go where no man or beast has gone before (well, at least up to issue 200). Beam me up Kirby!